Studies on the development of a diastereoselective and enantioselective total synthesis of vindoline and the clinically important antitumor drug vinblastine are detailed based on implementation of a unique tandem Diels-Alder/1,3-dipolar cycloaddition cascade of 1,3,4-oxadiazoles. In addition to defining the scope of such tandem cycloaddition cascades, applications in the total synthesis of (1) vindorosine, (2) minovine, (3) aspidospermidine, (4) (-)-vindoline, (5) (+)-vinblastine and (+)-vincristine, (6) and an extensive series of (+)-vinblastine analogues are detailed. The proposed studies include the examination of antitumor compounds that mediate their cellular effects through tubulin binding and provide a well-defined problem on the design, preparation, and evaluation of synthetic, mechanism-based analogues in which fundamental studies of the structural features responsible for tubulin binding affinity and selectivity may be addressed. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]